When I pulled into the hospital parking lot, I parked my truck on the curb at the emergency room entrance, not caring the slightest bit at the moment that it was a no-parking zone. I ran around to the passenger side, extracting Zia from the seat belt, and carried her into the emergency room lobby.
A male nurse stood at the desk and saw me as I entered, observing the limp, unconscious girl in my arms. I expected I would have to cause a scene to get the hospital staff to react, but he immediately sprang to action, coming to me as he put two fingers to her neck, checking for a pulse.
“I think she’s been drugged. She’s still breathing, but she’s been unconscious for the past seven, maybe ten minutes now,” I explained urgently. “I got her here as soon as I could. Please, help her,” I pled with the staff, as another female nurse had approached us now.
They took her from me and placed her on a stretcher that someone had wheeled out from somewhere I didn’t notice.
“Sir, we’ll take it from here. Please wait here in the lobby, and someone will be with you shortly,” the female nurse told me as they wheeled her quickly away through a set of double doors that closed behind them.
I noticed my pulse racing and I had no idea what to do next. I stood there for a moment, letting the panic settle, trying to calm down and convince myself that she was going to be okay. She had to be okay.
I decided to go out and park my truck legally. Afterwards, I went back inside to sit and wait. I checked in with the receptionist from time to time asking for updates, any news, and when I could see Zia.
The time was dragging by, which was killing me. I felt unproductive. I wanted to do something, but I was helpless to do anything at all. Finally, after a couple of hours had passed, a nurse came out and told me that Zia was stable and had been taken to a room.
Thank God.
Once I followed the nurse up to the third floor and maneuvered our way to her room, I entered cautiously. She was still asleep, and the tubes and wires connected to her had my heart in my throat.
“Is she okay?” I asked the nurse, a middle-aged woman with graying brown hair.
“She will be fine. Her blood tests showed trace amounts of a drug called Rohypnol. It’s a good thing you brought her in when you did. This drug metabolizes quickly and is hard to prove once it’s out of the system. You’ll have a good case if you decide to file a police report,” the nurse explained. “We have her on some fluids to help flush out the toxins, but she may have a headache or possibly some nausea when she wakes up.”
The nurse asked if I had any other questions, then checked the monitors one last time before leaving the room. Then it was quiet.
I pulled up a chair beside the hospital bed and sat next to her as I took her hand in mine. She looked so peaceful and beautiful lying there, asleep.
I felt guilty for leaving her alone with that dirt bag and for giving him the opportunity to do this to her. If I had only followed my gut instincts and just told her how I had felt instead of trying to wait until the end of the night when I was supposed to drive her home, none of this would have happened.
I must have dozed off while sitting there beside her. I roused a couple hours later when I felt Zia stirring. My hand was still holding hers when I came to.
“Dylan? What happened?” she asked groggily, a confused expression on her face as she looked around to see where she was.
“You’re awake. How do you feel?” I had never felt such relief to see someone awake in my life.
“I have a slight headache, but other than that I feel okay,” she answered.
I reached for the remote attached to the bed and pressed the button to call for the nurse.
“You scared the hell out of me, actually. I walked back to the table last night and you were gone. I looked around everywhere but couldn’t find you, so I thought maybe you had gone to the bathroom, until I saw you being dragged out by Cason. I knew something was wrong, and when I got to you I saw exactly what was happening… He had drugged you, Zia.”
She said nothing as that sunk in for a few moments, and then a tear fell from her eye and rolled down her cheek. It broke my heart.
“No, no, don’t cry, Zia. You’re okay now. You’re safe.” I wiped the tear away gently with my thumb.
At that, a nurse came in, a little too cheerful for what I knew Zia and I were both feeling at that moment. She began removing the I.V. and heart rate monitor wires as she explained to Zia that there were no more traces of drug in her system, that the Rohypnol had metabolized out within a few hours, and that as soon as she was able to get up and get around, she was free to go.
Once the nurse left the room, Zia asked about her clothes, so I handed them to her and helped her out of the hospital bed. She was able to walk into the restroom on her own, where she changed back into the clothes she had worn the night before.
When she came out, I couldn’t help but notice her eyes were red, and I wondered if she had been crying, though she wasn’t any longer if she had been. We left and I drove her home.
It was a quiet ride back to her apartment from the hospital. I could tell she had a lot weighing on her mind, and the last thing I wanted to do was say the wrong thing. I knew that I couldn’t even begin to fathom knowing how she felt about what had happened. I could tell she was taking it hard just by the way she looked distantly out the window. All I knew was that I was here for her, and I didn’t want to make things worse.
When we got to her apartment building, I parked and walked her inside. Standing at her apartment door, I stood facing her and braced my hands on her arms. “I’m here if you need anything, Zia.”
“Thank you, Dylan. Really, thank you. I don’t know where I’d be right now if you hadn’t been there to save me like you did,” she said.
We stood there for several seconds, saying nothing but looking into each other’s eyes. I could tell that there were a lot of emotions behind her eyes, but all I could do was wrap my arms around her to show her she was safe with me.
After I had gone home that morning after dropping Zia off, I crashed, sleeping several hours before waking up in a cold sweat from nightmares that I hadn’t gotten to Zia in time. The first thing I thought of after I woke up was how she was doing.
It was almost nine in the evening, so I decided I’d get dressed and run over to her place to see her. It was cold and I knew it might be late when I left, so I took my truck, even though it was just a couple of blocks away.
When I got there, I knocked on her apartment door and Clara answered.
“Hey, Dylan. Are you here to see Zia?” she asked.
“Yeah, is she here?”
“I’m afraid not. I think she went down to the Book Shelf,” Clara answered.
I nodded. “Okay, thanks,” I said as I turned to walk back in the direction I’d come.
I went back down to my truck, drove over to the Book Shelf, and within a few minutes, walked in to find Zia sitting alone at the bar. She had several empty tumbler-sized glasses in front of her, which was my first indication she may have had a little too much to drink.
She had just pulled her phone out and looked like she was about to text someone.
“Zia?” I said as I approached.
She looked up, but not in my direction as she lifted a hand to her forehead.
“Zia, are you okay?” I sat on the bar stool beside her.
She looked over at me and her eyes went wide with surprise. “You’re here? How did you know where to find me?” she asked.
“I went by your apartment to see you, make sure you were okay, and Clara said you were here. So here I am,” I explained.
“You came for me.” She had the slightest hint of a slur as she put extra effort into enunciating each word. That was my second indication that she had had too much to drink.
I grabbed my wallet out of my pocket and handed my debit card to the bartender to pay out her tab. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
We walked out together and I helped her into my truck. Once I got in and got the heat going, I noticed her left hand was resting on the center console with the other hand holding the door handle as though she were trying to steady herself. She shivered from the cold, so I reached out to touch her hand to gauge her temperature.
“You’re so cold. Here,” I said as I shrugged out of my jacket and put it around her. Then I took her hand in mine and held it, resting my other hand on the wheel as I drove us the short distance back to her apartment.
Once we parked in front of her building, I walked her up to her apartment, our fingers still interlocked. When we got to her apartment door, I didn’t want to say goodbye yet, but I also didn’t want to overstep my bounds, especially with her being in the inebriated state she was in at that moment.
I felt a sense of responsibility to protect her and care for her. I knew after the events from the previous night, her emotions were in a fragile place, or she wouldn’t have attempted to drown them in alcohol.
I wasn’t sure if it was the chill from the cold night air we had just come in out of without wearing my jacket, or the electricity shooting through me from the place our skin made contact as we continued to hold hands, approaching her apartment door. Maybe it was a combination of both, as a shiver went through me.
“You’re freezing,” Zia noticed. “Come inside for a while and warm up before you go,” she said as she opened her door and pulled me inside.
I hesitantly followed, still unsure of whether it was a good idea. What was the most that could happen?
It was dark inside the apartment, and Clara was nowhere in sight. Zia pulled me straight into her bedroom, closed the door behind us, and switched on a lamp sitting on the nightstand beside her bed. It cast a dim illumination across her room, lighting up her features just enough to see the gleam of an unnamed emotion in her eyes. I deemed it wishful thinking to call it desire.
She turned back toward me, positioning herself so that we stood face to face. She looked up into my eyes. “Dylan, I have a confession to make,” she began.
My pulse began to quicken as I recalled the night I said those same words to her. “Good things rarely follow that statement.” I jokingly used her reply to me from that night in response.
The way those big, blue eyes looked up at me had me reeling in anticipation at what she wanted to say, and I could hear my throat swallowing down my nerves.
For what seemed like forever, or maybe only a few seconds, she stood quietly, searching my eyes. Then before I knew what happened, her hands were in my hair as she pulled my lips down to meet hers, the length of her body pressed against mine. I could feel the heat that now radiated from her body.
I froze momentarily, unsure of what to make of it all. I wanted to know that Zia’s feelings for me were real, and not just recklessness as a result of the traumatic experience combined with copious amounts of alcohol. I didn’t want to be a regret for her when she woke up sober the next morning.
If I gave in and let myself let this happen, I also wasn’t sure whether it would be considered taking advantage of her while she was drunk, since she was the one initiating it.
My hesitation didn’t seem to deter her, and so I let myself allow it for the moment, giving in to the softness of her skin, the urgency of her lush lips against mine.
I had waited so long to feel her soft, firm body beneath my fingers. I could hardly believe it was finally happening now. I circled my arms around her waist and pulled her in tighter. I let my lips dance passionately with hers.
Without breaking the kiss, Zia pressed her hands against my chest and began walking forward, backing me up against the side of her bed. Warning lights began flashing in my mind, but God, she was sexy. I didn’t want to stop her.
She raised one knee up to her bed, leading me to sit, and as I did, she straddled my lap. Her arms lifted to rest on my shoulders, her fingers in my hair, she pressed her chest to mine and I couldn’t keep my hands off of her. With her arms raised, her shirt lifted just enough to bare the skin of her stomach, and my hands gravitated there, pulling her tightly to me to deepen our kiss.
I gently sucked on her soft bottom lip, and as her hands came down from my hair to press into the hard muscles of my upper back, a moan of pleasure escaped me. At the sound of it, I realized I needed to decide how far I would let this go tonight.
“Zia…” I breathed against her lips, thinking of how I could bring myself to stop everything when it was the last thing I really wanted to do.
“Shhhh, don’t think about it. Just feel it,” Zia said, then pressed her hands to my chest and lightly pushed as though she wanted me to lie down. She was not going to make this easy on me, I could tell, and I groaned internally with my secret frustration.
I resisted her push as I remained sitting and broke our kiss. I cupped her face in my hands softly and let myself take in how beautiful she was, warring with myself between what my head was telling me to do and what my body was wanting me to do instead.
“Baby, you’ll regret this in the morning,” I reasoned as I brushed a strand of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. I could see the protest in her expression, but she said nothing for a moment as she searched for something in my eyes.
“Dylan, I want you to hold me,” she whispered pleadingly, and I wondered how much of these emotions were real and how much were just the alcohol talking. Would she be saying or doing any of this if she hadn’t had too much to drink?
“Baby, I don’t want to hurt you,” I tried to reason with her. “You only want this because you’ve had too much to drink. That isn’t how it should be. Not with us,” I tried to explain.
“Why? You can do this with any random girl you meet in a bar, with strangers; with girls who have no idea that you’re the kind of person who always does what he says, or always shows up on time, or loves to just laugh and enjoy life and be in the moment, or how much your family really means to you, or how brave or how generous or how kind you are, or how genuine your heart can be. So why not me?” I had never heard her say so much in one breath before. It was a lot more than I’d expected, and even though my heart swelled at the compliments, I could tell she was upset.
How could I make her understand? I knew she wasn’t rational at that moment, but there was no good way to point that out without completely pissing her off.
“I can’t do this. Not with you, Zia, not like this,” I repeated, trying to implore her to understand.
At that, she slid off my lap and crawled to the other side of her bed, lying down facing the wall and away from me.
“I’m sorry, Zia,” I said, but she just lay there silently, resigned, looking at the wall.
I went to her dresser and began rifling through the drawers to find her pajamas. I found a pair of pajama pants and a tank top; then I walked back over to her as she continued to lie on her bed. I put my arm under her to gesture for her to sit up, and when she sat and faced me, I brushed my fingers across her cheek to wipe away a tear.
I lifted her shirt up and over her head before replacing it with the tank top. I followed suit, removing her jeans and replacing them with the pajama pants. It was an intimate moment, innocent as it was. She was silent the entire time, and once she was redressed, I picked her up to reposition her laying her head on her pillow.
I pulled the blankets up over her, tucking her in, and kissed her gently on her forehead before switching off the lamp on the table beside her. “Goodnight, baby,” I whispered. Then I sat beside her at the head of her bed, my back to the headboard as I softly stroked her hair until I could hear the slow, rhythmic breathing that indicated she was asleep.
I stood to leave, feeling heartbroken that Zia had experienced something so awful that she felt the need to go to this extreme to escape her feelings. This wasn’t her… Zia was not one to get drunk like this, and anyone who knew her at all would know this about her.
As I stepped out of Zia’s bedroom, closing her door behind me, I turned to find Clara sitting on the sofa in the living room. It was dark, but she held her cell phone with the screen illuminating her face just enough that I saw her there.
“You really do like her, don’t you?” Clara said to me, not really a question.
I took in a deep breath and let out a sigh, then nodded my affirmation silently in the dark. I didn’t know if she saw it or not, but I took my leave before she said anything else.